I’m kinda not at ease with the Pakistani military for hosting OBL the last two months in the country directly beside me. I’m also kinda thankful that Obama didn’t use that phrase War On Terror in his address. ALSO kinda slightly conflicted - never felt too glad at a death before, not sure if I should now?

By the way, happy voting. I don’t know if that’s got a touch of sarcasm to it or not; you decide. My whole life I’ve cheered for politicians the way I cheer for Canadian hockey teams once the Canucks are out of the playoffs (fortunately I won’t have to worry about that this year). And now, in the first election I can vote in, I’m in stinking India. I’m pretty sure I want change, or at least I feel like I should, but Michael Ignatieff seems pretty qualified. On the other hand, Michael Ignatieff seems pretty qualified. Maybe we’re in need of some innocent blood. Or maybe right now we’re in need of a leader who has necessarily a modicum of experience. I kinda miss Jean Chretien and his goofy smile.

Anyways, hope that clears everything up.

This feels like a meeting with someone I’ve avoided for a long time and then accidentally ran into at a coffee shop or something.

In the time between now and my last post, the entire middle east has erupted into reform/chaos, Japan got pretty nailed by Mother Nature and her toxic airborne offspring, Nepal celebrated the New Year in the truest kind of poverty, and -apparently most importantly - India won the Cricket World Cup. We hate cricket, and if you’ve ever watched, I’m sure you’ll agree on its indisputed status as the Very Biggest Waste of Time. Anyways, we made it through all that and a lot more (including but not limited to: sleeping on wooden and/or bamboo beds for a month, being attacked yet again by monkeys, narrowly escaping a tax-fraud heist, and pretty scary bus crash a couple days ago) Despite some negative vibes you might pick up from this paragraph, the quiet chords behind them possess all natural thirds; ignore this one if music isn’t your milieu (although I urge you in the spirit of one Hillary Duff to ask of yourself: ‘why not?’), suffice to say that there are some very valid and meaningful reasons to visit India, if you haven’t yet had the chance.

In Nepal, a smaller, quite impoverished country nuzzling up next to north India, we established a kind of base at the Vineyard Church in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. From there we took a bus/trek to Gorkha, and from there, onward to Polkhara;  Gorhka being a beautiful mountain village in the foothills of the Himalaya (mountain ranges being singular in all the local dialects), Polkhara being the fairly touristy kayak-dweller/para-gliding enthusiasts paradise.

After multiple failed attemps, I’m growing to understand that there isn’t much hope in trying to convey the proverbial marrow as well as the proverbial bones of the journey through the shall we say Blog medium. Or maybe I’m just growing impatient with myself and my (in)ability to express things that are meaningful to me. I can sure apologize elegantly, though, and when I think about it, that is almost just as handy a skill. Anyways, if I had one shot at the marrow, I might say that I’m learning the approach poverty without cynisism, maybe even without guilt. And learning to approach extremely annoying merchants without anger but with a sense of humor/arrogance (you have to sacrifice some of your social ethics for other parts of your sanity; it’s a rapidly-moving modicum of give-take - just don’t sacrifice too much), i.e. “Oh, free useless items? Thank you, Mr. Singh, thank you!” When they realize you think it’s free, they back off pretty fast.

Anyways, this is another aspect of my expressing-meaningful-things complex - I usually try to make a joke out of it. Not exactly sure what I’m trying to protect, but I encourage you to try to get it out of me, if only to remind me that it’s still there after a few months.

We’ve got our last week in Delhi, and then off to Phuket. While there still exists for me a leaving-town (India)-complex, this one weighs slightly less, (Jackson was resourceful enough to calculate that we’ve slept in 31 different beds/excuses-for-beds on our trip so far) due mostly to a singular factor, waiting patiently, standing in May 8th at the Phuket Airport. Singular factor is actually calling me right now, so so long, I’ll write soon ;)

That’s just what people say here, often. The first time I was a little confused; now I just say ‘yeah, thanks.’ 

For the last (almost) couple weeks Jackson and I have been training around northern India - making voyages to the Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh - as well as exploring our home base, Delhi. In the Punjab we visited Amritsar, home of the Gooooooolden Temple. The golden temple is the biggest Sikh temple in the world and that is really cool. We actually got to stay the night in the temple, meeting a surprising amount of people. It’s become a theme in India to meet people eager to welcome us to India and ask us what country we’re from (Ohhh, you are in Tarhonto, yes?). Sometimes it extends to them taking our picture, and rarely this has involved a nice-to-meet-you or a goodbye. However, the golden temple was entirely different. We met tons of people, foreigners and local Sikhs, all of them willing to show us around and talk to us about the history of the area and the temple.

In Rajasthan we did a lot of hiking. The Amber fort and monkey temple were highlights. The heat is a ridiculous, magnified heat when you’re hiking up to these places, but as we learned, there is ALWAYS a tap somewhere to take a shower at the top. In the case of the monkey temple, there was a pool. There we made another authentic connection we some local kids, a couple of whom spoke english. We talked about their girlfriends, their families, Canada, monkeys, cricket.  It was meaningful, somehow. Perhaps it’s impossible to escape meaning at such high altitudes, with such ridiculous, magnified heat, but I’m okay with those kind of natural altering variables. I think that may be be why I came to India, actually. Anyways, it was a great time, and there is no better feeling - spiritual or physical or whatever - than cliff diving into a freezing mountain pool at the top of a ridiculous monkey temple in Rajasthan. I will probably hearken back to this truth in times of lesser inspiration.

You can read about the Taj Mahal anywhere, you don’t need me to tell you about. Romantic and gruesome history, a lot of tourists wearing silly yellow and pink coverings over their shoes taking pictures of people taking pictures. It was really large, I won’t forget it, even with my memory. It was too large. I will say though that afterwards, we went to the shop of the family who for like 6 generations now have been making the same artwork that is inlayed into the Taj. There’s this cool stone called the Star of India that when light hits it is reflected in a 4-6 pointed star (depending on the color). It looks like a neat science experiment, but it comes from the earth and costs a lot of money.

We’re off to Nepal on Wednesday.

Anyways, I’m going now.

I wrote a blog yesterday that somehow was erased when i tried to post it. I have a lot to say about what Jackson and I have learned and experienced first-hand regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I’m pretty discouraged that I lost about two and a half hours writing on it. It feels like I’m taking a step backwards to write about it again, and that’s fairly discouraging. Although I’m sure my sentiments towards the issue won’t disappear and I’m you’ll no doubt hear from me about it sooner or later, it’s still a little frustrating.

Anyways, we’re in India now, but there is a lot of unresolved stuff for me still lingering. Israel and it’s conflicts and people and attitudes and smells are still hanging off of me and my clothes, it seems. However, I’m sure my disposition will catch up with my surroundings soon enough, as India is imposing to say the least. The smells bring me back to when I was 16 and visiting the country for the first time. And living is cheap again; Hallelujah! Today we took a 40 minute taxi for 2 dollars, I bought a cell phone charger for a buck, and 3 round-trip cross country train tickets for $100 total.

Some updates, then! In our last stretch in Israel we managed to play a game of soccer on the temple mount (on top of the Western Wall), tour through the tunnels of ancient Jerusalem beneath the modern city, float on the Dead Sea, hike up to the caves in which David (the bible - look him up) hid, as well as the mount of beatitudes, and meet a bedouin shepherd and his flock, on the hills surrounding the sea of galilee. We also visited the West Bank, as I am now allowed to mention, having left Israel; the West Bank being one of two major conflict zones in Israel along with the Gaza Strip. There’s a lot to tell about that leg of the journey (a lot that has been told on this very blog and is now floating out there somewhere in the void of hyperspace), and a lot of things to process that I never would have asked for.

And as for the future, we’ve got our time pretty much planned out between 5 states in India in addition to our stay in Nepal. With many adventures behind us and many more ahead of us, life right now embodies a real spirit, though I’m not quite sure what it is. Maybe it’ll be like a song writing process in which one discovers the majority of the meaning a few choruses in. The first verse was really beautiful, terrifyingly challenging at some points, and held some authentic magic with good friends, while the second looks wild and still really veiled, due in part to the fact that I haven’t yet heard back from our contacts in Nepal. I’ll try to write more, as our wonderful hosts Mark and Amy have stable internet here (a rarity in India). Ok, well, I always feel weird saying goodbye to you, since you exist exclusively in the form of a fragmented, exceptionally varried community, a myriad of e-culture I guess. So apply whatever token of virtual parting pleases you most, then, and I’ll pretend that I meant it when I see you next :)

Bryn

Hi from Jerusalem! It’s pretty neat, in case you were wondering.

To catch you up, Jackson and I have been hostel-hopping here for the last 3 days. ‘Abraham Hostel,’ primarily. We bussed here, and immediately upon our arrival it became apparent that our job here was to get as lost within the the ancient, labyrinthine walls as possible. And while we didn’t get as lost in 3 days as we might have liked, I can say with an honest heart that we tried our darn’dest. darnd’est. darndiest. darnstest. whatever.

The city is seriously a maze, a maze completely made out of white stone. We’re pretty sure they have some pretty massive stone quarries outside the city, and the effect is absolutely stunning. For about an hour before the sun sets, the whole darnded thing turns to gold in the light. For visual appeal (and I guess military tactics, historical significance, and religious purposes), everything sits on top of an enormous hill. 

The first couple days we spent ‘loafing’* around the city, doing free tours, and taking is as much as possible. We took the free tour our hostel offered, and then, honoring our Mennonite heritage and being as cheap as humanly and humanely possible, snuck into a prepaid tour, thinking that we’d fit in with the dumb, prepaid Americans. However, it became evident part way through the tour that it was a ‘Birthright Tour,’ which basically meant that a) everybody was Jewish, the tour focusing on the persistence of Jewish culture in a pagan-minded world, and b) THEY ALL KNEW EACH OTHER. Needless to say, we made our exits hastily upon our discovery of b). Nobody wants to deal with a prepaid American, not even wily canadian mennos. Israel really is a cultural warzone. The aboriginic myriad of Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Christians seem to get along pretty well, though…

Today we actually climbed the Mount of Olives. ON FOOT. Even though it isn’t actually a mountain, we were pretty drained when we got back to the hostel. Our self-directed/inflicted tour of the sacred hill included walking though the Garden of Gethsemane (where Jesus spent his last days), stopping by the Garden Tomb (one of two supposed crucifixion locations) led by a guy from Abbotsford who lived in Winnipeg - he’s a bombers fan - as well as visiting the Tomb of David and the Jerusalem Holocaust Museum, which weren’t included in the tours. It was all a little too much to handle, emotionally, to be honest. I can’t really say much more about that aspect. The city’s magic, and it’s hard not to be affected by a force that doesn’t mean business. Jerusalem means business. Actually it means the opposite -‘Abode of Peace’ - but you’d never know it from the aggressively-dispositioned drivers, destination-determined pedestrians, or cutthroat market.

Tonight we’re off to stay with a Friend Of A Friend in the south, presumably for the FOAF, Suhail and Jackson to get little sleep, while I, contrarily, am put to sleep by the soothing hum of the crowd during the highly anticipated Arsenal-Barcelona match on TV tonight.  

*trademark of Suhail Stephen, used excessively out of context

A word of gratitude to my dad, a late edit here.  He’s great.  He actually loaded up my phone with $20 of (recently-surpassing-in-value-the-American-dollar) Canadian dollars worth of Nimbuzz voip minutes.  I could seriously call him whenever.  On his bill.  Why i haven’t done so, idk.  Seriously, if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have basic existence, let alone a phone with minutes.  Oh, and did I mention its also his phone, his beloved Old Brain Nokia e90?  The one that he lovingly preloaded with maps of my whole trip?  Did i mention he’s great?  I’ll phone him right now, and then again soon, because like me, starting Monday, he’s also Going Places.  Sorry, Dad, I’ll make it up to you.  Cuz I miss you as much as you are surely missing me.